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Telehealth Resources For Psychotherapists
The pandemic has dramatically accelerated the adoption of telehealth in medicine and in psychotherapy. What are the best practices for telehealth in psychotherapy?
On Jan 15, 2021, Dr. Reo Leslie, Ph.D., presented these resources for practicing teletherapy to a Town Hall meeting of the Colorado Association of Psychotherapists.
- Teletherapy Guidelines And Policy (.docx) – Information for this document comes from DORA 30-1 Teletherapy Policy-Guidance Regarding Psychotherapy Through Electronic Means Within The State of Colorado
- Telehealth Protocol (pdf) – Recommend session protocol
- Proposed Teletherapy Guidelines (pdf) – Recommended teletherapy guidelines by the Association of Marital and Family Therapy Regulatory Boards
Carol O’Dowd Testified Before the Colorado Department of Human Services in 2020 about Registered Psychotherapists (now Unlicensed Psychotherapists). Listen to her story!
CAP plans for 2021 include:
- Quarterly Town Hall Meetings — if you have a topic you want addressed, please contact Chair of CAP’s Education Committee: Dr. Betty Cannon, Ex. Director, Boulder Psychotherapy Institute via www.boulderpsych.com Watch your email.
- Monthly Education/Network Events — discounted for CAP Members. Watch your email for invitations to attend education programs with popular speakers followed by networking opportunities to promote your practice.
- Legislative Monitoring — If you have questions about how new administrative rules or legislation impacts your practice, contact CAP Legislative Committee Chair, Dr. Reo Leslie at leslieinstitute@cs.com
- Compiling the credentials of the 4,000+ unlicensed psychotherapists. If you have not received a survey, contact CAP Board Member Seth Geer, LPC seth@sethgeerpsychotherapy.com
If you offer addiction counseling services and rely on digital advertising for clients, recent changes in policies by the leading ad platforms may impact your business.
The opioid crisis and online scams for addiction counseling services drove the three leading online ad platforms to restrict ads related to addiction and recovery. Facebook, Bing (Microsoft), and Google Ads all banned ads for addiction/recovery and related services to protect the public. Unfortunately, this hurt fraudulent and legitimate counselors and clinics alike. To remedy the issue, certification is now required to advertise for addiction counseling by a third-party company called legitscript.com. The requirements are steep and certification is expensive. Certification will be challenging or prohibitive for many small providers.
To read more about the background, read the New York Times article. To read more about the ban, read the Google Ads policy.
What you will not read in these articles is that using the banned keywords in your ads, keywords, or landing pages can get your ads banned, even if you are not explicitly marketing addiction and recovery services – so beware!
To learn more about the ad ban for rehab and addiction services, read “What Rehab & Addiction Facilities Need to Know About Recent Google Policy Changes“.
I will update this post as the digital ad policies evolve, and they will.
– Leland Hoover, MBA
Mental health practices are as varied as the diverse population we serve. One size does not fit all. Research shows that the most important factor in therapeutic outcomes is the quality of the relationship. To ensure the continued availability of quality, diverse mental health practitioners in Colorado, therapists and their clients need to engage the legislature to build support for unlicensed psychotherapy in Colorado. Activism is not something that comes naturally to most therapists.
The pandemic and its economic disruption have caused a surge in panic attacks, anxiety, and a host of mental health issues. People need help. If our voices are not heard, our clients could lose the help they need when they need us most.
If you care about therapy and counseling but don’t know where to start, please read “ Ten Veteran Organizers on the Key to Effective Activism” by ten leading activists on how to engage the public and legislators for change. The techniques described here are not specific to mental health. These methods are about how to effect change outside a therapeutic setting that we can use to protect quality mental health practices in Colorado.
If you care about mental health, get involved!
How to maintain a PRactice as an Unlicensed Psychotherapists Under the New Laws in Colorado
On July 14, 2020, the Governor of Colorado signed into law HB20-1206, a bill that impacts the right to practice by those previously titled Registered Psychotherapists who are now titled, Unlicensed Psychotherapists.
- Title Change: The title “Registered Psychotherapist” is changed to “Unlicensed Psychotherapist“. All Unlicensed Psychotherapists registered with DORA in Colorado need to update their Mandatory Disclosure Statement to indicate they are Unlicensed Psychotherapists.
- Registration Closed: New registrations are prohibited in the DORA database for the title Unlicensed Psychotherapists (formerly Registered Psychotherapists.) Anyone who did not apply for or have current registration as an Unlicensed Psychotherapist in the DORA database as of July 14, 2020, cannot become one.
- Lapsed Registrations: Unlike the past, there is no grace period for lapsed registrations, so plan ahead.
- Grandfathering: Unlicensed Psychotherapists with current DORA registration can continue to practice psychotherapy provided your registration never lapses.
- Mandatory Disclosure Statement: The new Colorado statute requires Unlicensed Psychotherapists to replace the term “Registered Psychotherapist” with “Unlicensed Psychotherapist” in their Mandatory Disclosure Statement. Please update your forms ASAP. For information from DORA, the link to their website page for Unlicensed Psychotherapists here. [updated Aug 9, 2020]
CAP Membership Supports Your Right To Practice
CAP continues to represent the interests of Unlicensed Psychotherapists in Colorado. CAP’s mission, ‘protecting the right to practice’ is more important now than ever. We suffered a major setback in HB20-1206 and must continue to fight for the right for Unlicensed Psychotherapists to continue practicing. The lobbyists for the organizations that lobbied successfully to close the registration for Unlicensed Psychotherapists are not satisfied. They have voiced an intent to eliminate Unlicensed Psychotherapists entirely in the next legislative session. CAP membership supports our legislative effort to protect the right to practice in order to maintain public access to diverse mental health professionals.
CAP uses membership dues to pay a professional lobbyist to represent the interests of Unlicensed Psychotherapists. Our focus this coming session will be protecting the right to practice psychotherapy.
We believe in the public’s right to choose from a diversity of mental health treatment options. Please join CAP. Maintain your right to practice and help expand access to diverse mental health care during this pandemic not reduce and eliminate mental health services.
We will update this post as we learn more about the new law. Thanks for your continued support!
Announcing the new CAP YouTube Channel
In response to the pandemic, CAP is in the process of creating its own YouTube Channel to support our mission to educate the public and members about mental health issues in Colorado. Additionally, Professional Members can upload short video introductions for inclusion in their business profiles on the CAP website.
Educational Videos
Members are welcome to submit their own videos for inclusion on the YouTube Channel. Videos must be directly relevant to the CAP mission, be educational in nature, and be of sufficient quality to reflect well on CAP, CAP’s members, and Unlicensed Psychotherapists in general. The member must own the rights to the video content and be willing to make the content freely available to view to the public.
To view an example of the type of educational video we are seeking, check out “Free without Excuses: Betty Cannon Talks about Applied Existential Psychotherapy (AEP)” from Boulder Psychotherapy Institute on Vimeo.
The video is available for your viewing pleasure at https://vimeo.com/46856569
Video Introductions For Your Psychotherapy Business
Professional Members are encouraged to create a brief, quality video to introduce themselves and their practice to the public. These introduction videos can be linked to your business profile on the CAP directory. Videos are recommended to be 30 seconds to 3 minutes in length. While you don’t need to hire a professional videographer to create your video, the video quality should be sufficient to reflect well on your business.
Video Creation
CAP will be creating and recommending resources to help you create a simple, professional introduction video. If you need additional help creating your videos, CAP will be partnering with video production experts that can help. Stay tuned!
Next Steps
If you have one or more videos you wish to publish on the CAP YouTube Channel, please email the title, speaker, description, and a link to the video to webmaster@coloradopsychotherapists.org.
If you have questions about the suitability of a topic or have technical questions, email them to webmaster@coloradopsychotherapists.org.
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CAP is working hard to maintain the right to practice as Registered Psychotherapists in Colorado. We want our clients to have consumer choice in the selection of their mental health professional.
Unfortunately, in this time of crisis and anxiety about our future, other mental health professionals are asking the Legislature to reduce the number of mental health professionals in Colorado by eliminating over 3800 Registered Psychotherapists from the Mental Health Professions Sunset legislation, House Bill HB20-1206. CAP has hired a lobbyist and CAP members are doing what they can to inform legislators of the professional mental health services offered by Registered Psychotherapists. We will be sending out additional information so please watch your email!